Life after School, the untaught Lessons

By Reagan Nyadimo.

Society today is full of very many young people desperate for advice on how to begin life after school. Thousands of youths throng into the outside life oblivious of the challenges awaiting them. Very few realize that they are no longer protected by the both the school administration and their parents. This drastic change of events has led to a number of suicides cases amongst young people. Some have ended up ruining their lives by over indulgence in drug abuse and immorality while others are forced to learn life the hard way.

The common advice “Work hard, get good grades, finish school and get a well-paying job” have turned out to be the biggest nightmare for young people once they step outside school. Things begin to change hours after graduation when reality dawns on them that life is not as rosy as we were meant to believe. Have you ever asked yourself why? Well below are some of the lessons our parents never taught us.

1.      How To Network

Majority of young people do not know how to interact with other people to exchange information and develop contacts to further their careers. Most of the interactions with great personalities have been reduced to asking for favors that range from jobs to money with little time left for seeking advice on professional issues.

2.      How to find life partner 

Africa is known to be a polygamous continent with most of our leaders caught up with custody cases. Our homes are not different with majority of families being raised by single parents. This state of affairs have kept talks about life partners the biggest secret amongst many families as parents shy away from this topic for fear of being asked questions. Trial and error, fear to approach a suitable life partner, abusive marriages are the end result. Ending up with the wrong partner is therefore inevitable as most young people gamble with love and testing life with every opportunity that presents itself. No-wonder our morning shows are filled with relationship talks with both men and women airing their dirty secrets to the whole world.

3.      Financial security

This remains the worst affected area as it also lacks in our curriculum. Nearly three quarters of graduates leave colleges and campuses without knowing how to budget, save and account for every single cent that leaves their pockets. The over-spending culture amongst most Kenyan youths have led them to live from hand to mouth. With no family to feed and siblings to take care of, most youths take their cash to entertainment joints, personal belongings and promiscuity with little left for savings. As a result, most young people find themselves in huge debts and salary advances even before advancing in their careers.

4.      How to build your career

Building once career and becoming a professional in your area of specialization has become a key challenge to most graduates especially those who ended up taking courses they didn’t apply for. Combination of external courses to make them marketable and increase their chances of employ-ability has become the biggest headache. This is largely contributed by loss of touch with the ever changing trends in the job market and inability of our parents and guardians to keep track of the diversity of the corporate world. Of concern is that a number of parents are still stuck with this mantra of employment. In the process thwarting every effort made by young people to be self employed.  

Of course we do not expect to be taught everything but the truth is, there lies important lessons we could have been equipped with to help us sail through this tough terrains of the “outside world”.

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We shall soon toast Champagne at gay weddings, believe me.

The country is broke. All the civil servants will content with 20% less package into their coffers, take it or leave. We don’t care. The government is attempting to fight the economic recession through all the avenues. The West has always been at our beck and call when it comes to economic salvation, and if you ask me, this would be the time for the son of the soil, Barrack Obama, to extend the arm of amnesty. The clash of the civilizations between the West and some of the African states are the genesis of some of these problems.

The conspiracy of the new world order seems to be achieving its base along these occurrences. In his paper titled Clash of Civilizations, 1993, Samuel Huntington remarked that the final phase of the human evolution would be the conflict of civilizations, or better still the clash of civilizations. This might not affect us so much but our neighbors Uganda may be in for a shock. We have always guarded our civilization as Africans with pride and the poking from the west has always been ignored greatly. We are at the final phase of evolution where our civilization will be subdued by the West or we do the same to theirs, however the latter is a sheer dream. 

Few weeks ago, we applauded the Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, for appending his signature to the Gay law, which was indeed a Pan Africanism in action. Gay marriage to us is a culture of the West, it is obnoxious. From the other angle I see, twenty years from now after we shall have ushered in a new Kenya, fully industrialized having achieved vision 2030, we shall be uncorking champagnes, for those who will be alive, to either two women marrying each other or two rough chinned gentlemen saying “I do” down the aisle. Our civilization shall be far away from reach, and yes we shall have a liberal society.

The Africans have always compromised their civilizations. It dates back to the arrival of the white men, who brainwashed the Africans first with religion the enslaved, them in their own land. Karen Blixen, a white settler who owned entire Karen estates in Nairobi writes that rhythm of taming a wild animal is the same for the African native. Indeed, we have never taken pride in our culture.

Language  

The most important component of civilization is the avenue to a consensus, language. The Africans have never taken pride in their language; Julius Nyerere stressed the used of the native language as a way of ensuring self governance. Some countries like Kenya adopted the White-man’s language as medium for communication. They paid through their noses to learn that language. In primary schools where we learnt, speaking our mother tongue was a crime, it earned many including me strokes and hefty punishments. The disc, a small timber, was circulated in class for those who spoke the mother tongue. Speaking our language which is a basic component of our civilization was a crime.

This happens several years after the independence of our country, English is the only language that would show superiority in the public sphere, as a matter of fact students would laugh at you if you don’t imitate a White-man’s accent while speaking English. The churches today have got single language of preaching, English. My current Sunday school class cannot recite the Lord’s Prayer in vernacular, and many kids are taught English at tender ages. Due to the ethnical alignments in our country even the native names are slowly fading away, we are adopting the English names. What is this if not colonizing us again?

In his analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, Arnold Toynbee states that civilizations come, they grow and die, and when civilizations die, we “burry them in the sands of time”. This fact worries me a great deal; will we soon bury the African civilization? Bearing in mind that Christi

Having accepted the culture of the West in all our activities, I have no doubt, in a matter of few years we shall accept the gay marriage and we shall approve it. There are things we considered taboo in our culture, they were nowhere near our civilization. In the early 1990s, mentioning condom was a taboo, talking about sex with our children was a taboo, kissing in our weddings and hugging of couples before the children was a sin. Today we have adopted them; we even walk in hot pants in the house with our children seeing everything in us. We visit the swimming pools and swim with them, we kiss in front of them and it doesn’t raise an eyebrow. Civilization. We are all colonized; eating the local delicacy like pilau using bare hands is an embarrassment. The Western Civilization is here to stay. 

Dressing

 

Before the arrival of the White with the iron horse, our dress code was different. The ladies covered their bodies and men had little to admire from them, the culture underwent metamorphosis, into scanty materials that only covers a section of the “fundamentals”. These cloths all originate from the West; they are damped in our country. The clothes either expose or cover but reveal the geography of the body.  

Dress code of the West and the hairstyle are dictated by many factors, some of which are out of Africa, however the Africans will adopt anything from the West after all they are the custodians of the best civilization.

New World Order

If the conspiracy of the new world order is anything to go by, then it would be inherent to relook at the gay marriage law in Africa and Kenya as a state. The West are the Super Powers, they would without doubt, push for cultural hegemony in which the other civilizations would be forced to adopt. The gay marriage is a “thing” of the West, they are the movers and the shapers of the economy, and they are the economic salvation of the nations at a time of need. The poor developing nations would be going down to their door steps to seek for help in the forms of grants and the loans. Kenya and other countries in Africa accepted many odd things from the West, swimming together with your son in the beach or swimming pool, hanging your daughter in public which initially was a taboo, kissing your wife in front of your children, and of course with time you will accept same sex relationship, you will live with them and attend the same functions together. Why waste time, accept and move on. That is where we are headed.

All the West wants in order to support the free primary education, in order to salvage Kenya and other African countries from the economic desperation is to accept the gay partners. Influence Uganda to accept the fact that same sex partners deserve a better life, and move on. They want Africans to abandon their culture, as they did before, and kowtow them, then shall be saved from these left and right problems. The choice is yours Take or leave it.

Kassim Mwalimu Adinasi,

The writer is a Communication student at Maseno University, and a Freelance Journalist.

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Are Students Loosing Hope In The Corporate World?

By Reagan Nyadimo

The academic wing of Kenyatta University Students Association (KUSA) on 20^th March 2014 organized an event at Kenyatta University Amphitheatre to expose final years to the world of CV writing. The event which was sponsored by Africa Talent Bank, Unilever, Kazi pap and Kenyatta University was scheduled to begin from 9:00am-1:00pm with the main aim of orienting finalist on how well to pass interviews and equip them with the necessary skills to present their cover letters in a way that will put them at a vantage position over other applicants. This noble idea from the academic secretary Dan Mark could not have come at a better time especially now that thousands of university graduates are scrambling for the few available jobs in the civil service.

Sadly, a huge proportion of students decided to skip this event dubbed “Mega Interview Simulation” despite posters and fliers going round the university a week before the event. The theatre that carry close to 3000 students was only filled by 200 finalists. This low turn-out led to the cancellation of the event that was meant to go for two days. Academic secretary and the motivational speaker Steve Obuogo who was also to grace the occasion linked the poor turn-out to the lecturers’ strike that was recently called off. The two both said that majority of students missed the event to attend to cats that were scheduled for Thursday 20, 2014. However, they agreed to hold the same event before students sit for their final examination which is to kick off from 31^st March 2014.

This is not the first time students are skipping an event of such a great magnitude. It was not surprising that Career week experienced the same, as majority of students skipped the days that would have given them an opportunity to interact with their prospective employers only to turn out in large numbers on the last day that is always graced with entertainment. On the contrary, events based on entertainment are famous for attracting a large number of students with culture week topping the list of such events. Other events include comedy nights organized by theatre groups and films where students get intoxicated and engage in immoral behaviors.

If this trend continues then the university and corporate world should be worried as more students will not pursue corporate-type jobs and universities will not attract individuals to do courses tailor made to suite the corporate world.

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